Mon 27 May 2019:
Police suspect a splinter group of Maoist rebels that opposes the government for arresting its supporters
Four people were killed and seven wounded on Sunday in three explosions in the Nepalese capital. Police said they suspected a Maoist splinter group was responsible for the blasts in Kathmandu. “Three people were killed on the spot and the fourth one died while undergoing treatment at a hospital,” police spokesman Shyam Lal Gyawali said. One person was killed in an explosion inside a house in the Ghattekulo residential area in the heart of the city.
“I heard a big noise and rushed to the spot to find the walls of a house had cracked due to the impact of the blast,” student Govinda Bhandari, 17, said at the site of the first explosion. The second blast took place near a hairdresser’s salon in the Sukedhara area on the outskirts of the city, where three people were killed. The third blast, a crude device, went off near a brick kiln in the Thankot area of Kathmandu, injuring two people, police said. All of the seven injured people were taken to hospital. The second blast shattered the door and window panes of the shop and the area had been sealed off by the army.
Mr Gyawali said police suspected the blasts might have been the work of a splinter group of Maoist rebels who were opposed to the government for arresting its supporters. “A pamphlet from the group has been found at the site of the first blast,” he said. The house was used to make improvised or crude explosive devices by activists from the group, Mr Gyawali said. One of the injured was a supporter. Nepal emerged from a decade-long Maoist civil war in 2006 and the main group of the former rebels has joined the party that runs the government. The breakaway group carried out a similar blast in Kathmandu in February, in which one person was killed and two were wounded. No one has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s explosions.
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